Whispering Tongues

Homer is the name the Greeks gave to the poet of the Iliad and the Odyssey, probably composed in Ionia in the eighth century BC. Ancient tradition pictured him as a blind singer, and modern scholars have shown that the poems grew out of a long tradition of oral poetry, sung by bards who used repeated phrases to compose as they performed.

Whether one poet or many, Homer stands at the beginning of European literature, and the Greeks learned their heroes, gods and values from him. Sulayman al-Bustani's verse translation of the Iliad, published in 1904 with a long introduction, was a milestone in Arabic letters.